Maria Arpa
This week
Reality
Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
The Wednesday Whisper
Whose reality?
Terms like Gaslighting and Social Domination have become more familiar in recent years. They describe a culture where, through the mis-use of control and power, a person or group imposes a reality on others while denying or disallowing a different lived experience.
By doing this over and over again, the person whose reality is ‘not allowed’ doubts themselves as being a reliable witness to their lived experience and eventually surrenders to the controller. And, of course, it is entirely possible to gaslight oneself by discrediting your own emotions.
In domination culture (which is our mainstream indoctrination), the people with the power put resources into convincing us that everything is normal while, at the same time, others are being oppressed and denied their truth. The dominating person or group creates the tyranny of majority rule by convincing others that they hold the true reality. It is a clever manipulation that separates us from our common humanity.
In my experience, the people doing the gaslighting are often ignorant to what they are doing. This is what makes it so unsafe. It’s far easier to open a conversation with someone who is doing something with full consciousness than it is to speak with someone in avoidance or denial. This is why it is important that those on the receiving end recognise the pattern and have a specific container for naming it, recording it and seeking support.
I often see a lot of gaslighting in the criminal justice system when a group of supposedly ‘learned’ people with fancy titles, who were not there and can never truly know what happened, impose a reality based on a balance of probability. How much more dehumanising can we get when this is considered a ‘normal’ system that should be respected.
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
It’s very fulfilling to use the Dialogue Road Map as a means to helping someone recognise the changes they need to make. This holds true for both the recipient and the perpetrator.
The Wednesday Whisper
Have you been on the receiving end of gaslighting?
Or have you ever imposed a reality onto someone and been closed to their lived experience
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Life After Prison
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